(Melanie Stengel — New Haven Register) Mark Barden, of Sandy Hook Promise, meets with the New Haven Register Editorial Board 11/15. Barden who is Advocacy Director for the group, lost his son, Daniel in the Sandy Hook School shooting.

As the one-year anniversary of the Sandy Hook shootings approaches, it’s tempting to focus on things that have not changed since that horrific day last December.

Political rhetoric, which softened momentarily out of respect for the victims, quickly returned in some quarters to the type of harsh, divisive talk that has disenchanted so many people in so many states.

And think of the work that Daniel’s dad, Mark, Ana’s mom and other parents and activists are doing to bring about change.

Mark Barden, Nelba Marquez-Greene and Nicole Hockley, whose son, Dylan, was killed last December, all are working full-time for Sandy Hook Promise, a nonprofit organization aimed at preventing gun violence and helping people who have lost loved ones, in Newtown and throughout the country.

Several other Sandy Hook parents are involved with the organization, though the group makes it clear that it doesn’t speak on behalf of all of the victims’ families.

So what is the group doing, and why are we hopeful that it can bring about change?

Some of the energy people like Barden, Marquez-Greene and Hockley have spent over the past year has been talking to state legislators and members of Congress about initiatives to improve gun safety, mental health and school security.

Those efforts have produced some clear victories and some frustrating defeats. Connecticut’s legislature — with overwhelming bipartisan support — passed one of the strictest gun safety bills in the country. Other states have passed similar but less robust bills. But in Washington, change has been hard to come by.

But Sandy Hook Promise is about far more than legislation. The group is honoring the victims’ memories by trying to foster a civil conversation that puts kindness above ideology.

That may sound extremely basic, but at a time of divisiveness and dysfunction, it matters that people who disagree strongly about things politically can at least agree on a few basic things.

Last week, Sandy Hook Promise unveiled the Parent Together initiative, a grassroots campaign designed to empower parents and to encourage everyone to be more like Daniel Barden, who, Mark Barden said, hated it when kids were sitting alone and always reached out to befriend them.

Barden’s niece started a “What Would Daniel Do” Facebook page on which friends, family members and complete strangers tell stories of kindness that honor Daniel’s memory.

The Marquez-Greene family runs a similar page honoring Ana. In a sign of the far-reaching impact of her memory, the page has more than 100,000 likes.

Sandy Hook Promise is running public service announcements on national TV to promote Parent Together. The first one stars the cast of “Modern Family.” Others will soon follow.

The causes of the slayings, and of gun violence across the country, are complex, as are many of the potential solutions. And the debate over those solutions has grown way too divisive.

But here’s something we ought to be able to agree on: As Mark Barden noted Friday, Adam Lanza, who killed 27 people that day last December before killing himself, was likely one of the kids who sat alone at school.

“I can’t but help but think that if somebody like my little Daniel had noticed him sitting alone and had gone over and had a conversation with him one more time,” Barden said, “maybe things could be very different.”